Jennifer Latson

How did you become a writer?

I started my journalism career at The (Centralia) Chronicle, a small newspaper in the foothills of the Washington Cascades, where my title was “rural reporter,” meaning that I covered the goings-on in towns with fewer than 1,000 residents. Most of my stories were about logging accidents, mill accidents, meth lab explosions, and, even more harrowing, small-town politics. I covered events like the Toledo (Washington) Cheese Days festival and was later banned from the Morton Loggers Jubilee for writing about an 80-year-old retired logger who wasn’t allowed to compete in the spar pole climbing contest. He had proven to me, in a demonstration that I feared would become another logging accident, that he was still a force to be reckoned with on the spar pole. This was the best job I’ve ever had. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

One of my all-time favorite books is Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. I read it when I was just starting out in journalism, and it became the model for the kind of immersive literary journalism I wanted to do. Rebecca Skloot and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s books have also been immense sources of inspiration.

My freshman year in college, I was extraordinarily lucky to have Susan Rieger, the author of The Heirs and The Divorce Papers, as a writing teacher. She wasn’t a novelist then, but she was an incredible teacher whose advice and encouragement have fueled my writing career from the beginning. It’s funny; she read all these essays I wrote when I was 18, but I didn’t get to read any of her work until a few years ago, when she published her first book. And then I realized that our writing styles are nothing alike — I admire her writing enormously, but our voices are very different. I’m not sure why that surprised me, but I guess I had always assumed that she had taught me to write like her. Instead, she had helped me cultivate my own unique voice. I’m so grateful to her for that.

When and where do you write? 

My favorite place to write is at a coffee shop. I spent eight years in newsrooms, and I find that the background noise is good for focus. I like having other people around — as long as they’re doing their own thing and ignoring me. The biggest drawback is that I never know what to do with my laptop when I go to the restroom. Do I take it with me? Ask someone to watch it? Cover it with napkins and hope nobody notices it? Usually I just hurry and hope for the best.

What are you working on now? 

I’m trying to come up with an idea for my next book. If you have any, let me know. My first book, The Boy Who Loved Too Much, is narrative nonfiction about a rare genetic disorder called Williams syndrome, which is sometimes called the opposite of autism: It makes people extremely outgoing and overwhelmingly affectionate. That project took seven years from conception to publication, and the immersive reporting, while incredibly rewarding and worthwhile, was intense. I can’t imagine spending that much time with people who aren’t so intrinsically kind and lovable — which is pretty much all of the rest of us. So I’d like to pick something that won’t take quite as long. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Often, but never for very long. The antidote is to have daily deadlines that your livelihood depends on. Luckily, I had those as a newspaper reporter; I’ve tried to impose them on myself now that I don’t have editors yelling at me. I set daily word goals and just imagine the irate editor.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Write directly.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Be interesting.

Jennifer Latson is the author of The Boy Who Loved Too Much, the poignant story of a boy’s coming-of-age complicated by Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that makes people biologically incapable of distrust. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly wrote, “[Latson] skillfully interweaves the science — what we do and don’t know about genetic disorders such as Williams — with a powerful story line.”

Anne Corlett

How did you become a writer?

I wrote compulsively from a very young age, but took a break from it when I was first working as a lawyer in London. The break lasted ten years, and came to an end when I suddenly decided that I needed to sit down then and there and write the novel that had been brewing for all that time. Unfortunately, this was right in the middle of a move from London to Somerset, and our eldest son was 18 months old at the time. I was therefore extremely unpopular with everyone involved in the moving process, and I’m probably very lucky that people were still speaking to me by the time the first draft was finished.

That novel got me an agent, and garnered some interest, but ultimately went unpublished. The second got as far as an acquisitions meeting. It was the third, written in the closing months of the Bath Spa Creative Writing MA, after a late change of project, that made it to the finishing post.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

I had a very inspirational English teacher when I was at secondary school. She always encouraged me in my writing, and also encouraged me to read widely. She did, however, once say to me that if I was serious about writing, I needed to spend less time reading science fiction and fantasy and more time on the classics. It was probably the one bit of her advice that I didn’t take, as shortly after that I discovered some of the incredible speculative fiction of writers such as Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing, and, as a result, realised that ‘literary fiction’ and ‘speculative fiction’ were not mutually exclusive concepts!

While we’re talking about writing influences, I’d also like to give a nod to the wonderful How Not to Write a Novel by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman. It might make you wince regularly as you recognise some of your own horrible habits, but it’s ultimately an incredibly insightful and accurate look at the worst mistakes that a writer can make, set out in a humourous, laughing-with-you-not-at-you way.

When and where do you write?

I’m a bit of a nomad when it comes to writing. If I try to spend the whole working day in the same place, I generally get bored and find my attention wandering. I therefore tend to move about over the course of the day. I might start in the local bookshop café, then head home to my desk, for a couple of hours, before moving downstairs to the kitchen table for a last burst. If the weather is good. For some reason, I also like being high up when I’m working, so I’ve been known to head up the garden to perch on the kids’ climbing frame with my laptop.

As to the ‘when’, the answer is any time I’m not being harassed by three small boys who expect me to act as cook, cleaner, chauffeur and referee, and be on call 24/7.

What are you working on now?

I’ve returned to the project I put on hold to write The Space Between the Stars. It’s set in an alternate version of London and based around the strange and compelling world of immersive theatre.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I’ve never suffered from a complete block, but I do sometimes find things very slow going. Oddly, the times when I’m plodding along, thinking ‘Good grief, I’m even boring myself here’ quite often seem to be the times that produce my better work!

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

My MA tutor Maggie Gee put a huge amount of time and effort into getting me to realise that, when it comes to writing, less is almost always more. She once said that I had a habit of ruining a great sentence by going on just a beat too long. That advice often echoes in my mind when I feel myself getting carried away, and trying to remember the last time I hit the full-stop key.

What’s your advice to new writers?

I think that learning to write is a patchwork process. You can’t rely entirely on courses and classes – you have to spend time on your own, just getting the words down on the page and learning from your own mistakes. But equally, there probably aren’t that many writers who can reach publication standard entirely on their own natural ability, with no input from anyone else. It’s probably worth spending a bit of time figuring out what it is that you want to write, and getting a decent number of words down on the page, before starting to look around for ways to hone your skills. Have a look at some books on writing – like How Not to Write a Novel, mentioned above – or online courses. Once you’re feeling confident with the basics, you might want to consider joining a local writing group – feeding back on other people’s work is as valuable as receiving feedback on your own – or investing in a more intensive course or retreat.

Anne Corlett is originally from the north-east of England, but sort of slid down the map and now lives in the south-west with her partner and three young sons. She is a criminal lawyer by profession, but now writes full-time – or as full time as the aforementioned sons will allow. The Space Between the Stars is her first published novel, and was released in the UK on1 June by Pan Macmillan and in the US on 13 June by Berkley Publishing.

David Burr Gerrard

How did you become a writer?

Reading certain books gave me a certain intense feeling, and it seemed to me that a major point of being alive was to experience that feeling. I wanted to write books that would make readers experience that feeling. So I wrote, then threw away what I had written because it was terrible, then wrote some more. Eventually I made a significant amount of headway on two manuscripts—one called Short Century, the second called The Epiphany Machine—but with each one I got stuck. I went back and forth between the two for years. I often thought that neither manuscript would ever be published, that nothing I wrote would ever be published. I kept writing anyway. Short Century was published in 2014, The Epiphany Machine is being published this summer, and I am well under way on my third novel.  

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

Kafka is the clearest influence on The Epiphany Machine. He’s the only writer in the history of literature whose work might reasonably be called “realistic.” My other biggest influence is Philip Roth, the writer whose books I always want to put down and yell at, then to keep reading. That’s my model for what engagement with literature should look like. If you’re not tempted to hate a book, why would you bother loving it?

My most important writing teacher was Leslie Woodard, with whom I took creative-writing classes in high school and college. She died in 2013 at the age of fifty-three. I am only stating the facts when I say that I still hear her voice in my head whenever I sit down to write, and especially whenever I try to avoid sitting down to write.  

When and where do you write? 

Whenever and wherever I can manage not to have an internet connection. This usually means both leaving my apartment and using the Internet-blocking app that is strangely but perceptively called Freedom. 

What are you working on now?

I’m writing a novel about a mysterious disease that appears to be killing everyone born in the calendar year 1981 (the year I was born) but is leaving everyone else unaffected. It obviously reflects my own concerns about my encroaching middle age, just as The Epiphany Machine reflects my own concerns about finding my own way and my own value system. I like taking whatever is most personal to me and spinning it around I can find a weird angle that allows me to see it more fully and clearly.   

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Every day. Writer’s block is like heavy traffic or problems with the subway on your commute to work. It’s so frustrating it can make you want to peel your skin off. But you wouldn’t let a bad commute keep you from getting to work, would you?

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Write every day, and accept no excuse to miss a day. Then, when you inevitably go for days or weeks or months without writing, forgive yourself and get right back to work. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

That even when you’ve ignored the best writing advice, even when you feel you’ve squandered every opportunity, even when your other obligations nibble at your day until it seems there is nothing left but the tiniest crumbs, even when you’re convinced you have zero talent and that your time at the keyboard could be better spent any other way, still, STILL you can get some writing done today. Finally, the best writing advice is also the best life advice: remember that nobody else has any idea what they’re doing, either.

David Burr Gerrard is the author of THE EPIPHANY MACHINE (Putnam, July 2017) and SHORT CENTURY (Rare Bird, 2014). He teaches creative writing at the 92nd Street Y, The New School, and the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop. He lives in Queens, NY with his wife.